


You Can't Go Home Again (So Bring Her With You)

by Inquartata (mackillian)



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mackillian/pseuds/Inquartata
Summary: It falls to friends—specifically, Talein's Daughters—to make sure Cora and Janae don't do something dumb, like one leaving for another galaxy and the other not following.





	You Can't Go Home Again (So Bring Her With You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rackofages (boshtet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boshtet/gifts).



Save for Cora and Janae, the private shuttle berths of the usually bustling Tamayo Point were empty, the overhead lighting reflecting dully off the beaten metal floor. Missing were the echoes of footsteps, muted by the silent walk of the two commandos.

Janae, arms tightly crossed, stopped just short of the shuttle’s ramp and faced Cora. “What if I say I need you?” Then she gritted her teeth, like she wanted to be stoic, like she wanted to be handling Cora’s impending departure without a struggle. But she wasn’t. She’d struggled since they’d first discussed it outside the hospital.

Her eyes gave her away. Janae’s eyes always did.

Cora waited for her to say she wanted to go.

Janae didn’t.

But Cora couldn’t ask her to go. Not when Janae had friends and family here in the Milky Way, people she could spend potential centuries with while Cora would be a blink of an eye in comparison. It wasn’t like asking someone to move in with you on the other side of the galaxy, still only a half-dozen relay jumps away from other friends and family. Asking Janae to go with her would’ve been asking her to give up everyone and everything for Cora. Permanently. And then all those centuries after Cora’s death would be spent in a new galaxy, forever removed from those she’d left behind. How could Cora ask her to do that?

She couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair.

Cora didn’t ask Janae to go with her.

Janae didn’t ask Cora to stay, either. She breathed deeply and then relaxed her posture before closing all the distance between them. “These people had better appreciate you,” she said, pressing her forehead against Cora’s, linking her hands behind Cora’s neck. A pause and a shaking breath. “They’d better appreciate you like I do.”

After placing her hands on Janae’s hips, Cora allowed her biotic field to rise and mesh with Janae’s. Warm and comforting, resonating with their shared emotions: security, love, attraction, want. Cora cracked a smile with the last. “You know, I don’t think I want Alec to appreciate me like you do.”

A choked laugh escaped from Janae before she cupped Cora’s face in her hands and kissed her softly. One last time. One last memory for Cora to bring with her to Andromeda. One last memory for Janae to keep with her in the Milky Way through all the centuries Cora would be asleep, and then the years after, when Cora would be unreachable.

Cora knew it wasn’t enough, that their relationship deserved more of a chance, but the Initiative _needed_ her and Janae didn’t. If Janae did need her, she would’ve asked Cora to stay. Or asked to go with her to Andromeda.

But she hadn’t, and so they had this. One last farewell.

It didn’t explain why leaving Janae behind hurt as much as it did.

As Cora watched from her shuttle’s front viewport, Janae faded.

Until she was gone.

Until _Cora_ was gone. Janae was still there. It was Cora who was leaving.

Something she couldn’t identify was wrenched from within her, and shattered bones had nothing on its shapeless pain. But the Initiative needed her. The Milky Way didn’t, not even Janae.

 

* * *

 

The forested slopes of the mountains surrounding the purported pirate base reminded Janae of the forests around Kurinthia, trees and undergrowth lush, the smell of damp, rich soil encompassing them. 

The similarities ended there. 

The thirty-two hour days and equally as long nights on Chalkhos were too strong of a reminder that she wasn’t on Thessia for the rest to convince her otherwise.

After a few days spent scouting the entire valley and observing ships coming and going at the supposed pirate base, the Nefrane’s cryptos were finally close to breaking the base’s surprisingly strong comm frequency encryption. Which meant Talein’s Daughters were finally going to get reliable and revealing intelligence about the pirates who didn’t act like typical pirates. While some of the targets they observed disembarking the ships on the base’s roof landing platform wore mercenary-type gear, there were also quite a few salarians and even some humans wearing lab gear. And no one wore lab gear unless they were an actual researcher. Honestly, that they’d operated this long without being discovered was a miracle.

Janae flicked some dew off one of the wide leaves of the forest’s thick carpet of low-lying ferns. She was trying to write Cora like she’d promised, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Refused to, because they weren’t the ones she wanted to say.

What she’d wanted to say on Tamayo Point. What she’d wanted to ask. She wouldn’t have asked Cora to stay because her choices were hers to make, but Janae would’ve liked to go, if there’d been a place for her. Cora was worth that much.

But Cora hadn’t asked.

Janae _still_ couldn’t manage a subject line.

> [Draft]
> 
> To: Cora
> 
> From: Janae
> 
> Re: …

She stared hard at the datapad, willing it to give her answers. For inspiration of some sort, she’d even gotten out the travel-sized—as Cora had described it—bottle of shampoo Cora had forgotten in Janae’s kit. Since it was the hardest to find _and_ Cora’s favorite, Janae hadn’t been able to part with it. Not while Cora was technically still in the Milky Way.

“You’re an idiot,” Tethys said from her spot against a rock across from Janae.

She frowned. “That seems harsh, especially in that it came out of nowhere.”

“You deserve it, being here instead of getting ready to sleep on one of those arks.”

“How did—”

“You’ve been working that message for half an hour,” said Kalia, back against the tree next to Tethys’s rock.

Janae frowned at her, too. “Maidens don’t follow their girlfriends to completely new galaxies.” There, that should throw them off.

“That’s _exactly_ what maidens do,” said Valenza. “You’re supposed to be rash and bold, not... whatever it is you are right now.”

“It’s called moping,” said Tethys.

“I am not.”

“Janae,” Nisira said without looking up from her stealth-display omni, “what do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

Nisira looked up and studied her for a moment. “Why are you here?”

Convinced that they were messing with her, Janae looked from Nisira to the base far below and then back. “To conduct reconnaissance on this base to confirm activities there before we move in and clear it out?”

Valenza quietly laughed.

“Goddess save me from clueless maidens,” Nisira muttered under her breath. “I meant why are you here and not with the Initiative?”

“I really did think you’d follow her,” said Kalia.

“She lost a hundred credits to me,” said Tethys. “I’d told her not to bet against maidens being dumb. She didn’t listen.”

“Why didn’t you join the Initiative with Cora?” asked Valenza.

Janae turned her confused look on her and decided to stop trying to dodge their questions because it was obvious they were determined to get a real answer out of her. “She didn’t ask.”

Valenza set aside her book, giving Janae her full attention. “Did you want her to?” she asked, her gentle tone a stark difference from the fierceness of the priestess when she was in combat.

“I thought she would, but…” Janae sighed. “When she didn’t, I assumed she didn’t want me to go.”

“So we’re back to what I asked before,” said Nisira, as patient as ever. “What do you want?”

“If your answer isn’t ‘to be with Cora,’ when we get back to the Nefrane, I’m going to hit you so hard with a singularity that it’ll send you into the future,” said Kalia.

“I do want to be with Cora.” She did. She really did. And now regret threaded through her every feeling except one. Fear. “But I don’t want to go where I’m unwelcome.”

Every other person in the squad looked at her in disbelief, but it was Nisira who spoke for them all. “You’re more than welcome, I’m sure. We’re all sure. But a human wasn’t going to ask someone who’ll outlive her by centuries to come with her on a one-way trip away from everyone they know.”

“Oh.”

“ _Oh_ , she says.” Nisira sighed. “What do you want? Because if you want to go, I can speak with Sarissa Theris. She and Matriarch Ishara were inquiring about interested commandos a few days ago. Apparently, they’re short on ones around your age.”

Janae’s heart fluttered at the possibility of seeing Cora again. Of staying with her, even if it meant traveling to another galaxy. “I want to go.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

 

* * *

 

“The Initiative doesn’t need me,” Cora said to Lexi as they sat in the Tempest’s otherwise empty galley, Cora on a bench seat and Lexi in a chair across from her. “It didn’t need me starting back in the Milky Way. The SAM-E experiment was a failure and Alec knew before we left that one of his kids would have to be Pathfinder after him. That SAM would integrate with Ryder like what happened on Habitat-7 and then be untransferable to anyone except another Ryder. Now I’m here in Andromeda, millions of light years from where I could’ve called home, millions of light years from the person I love, left without a way for me to build the future I was promised I could.”

The frustration surged again and Cora almost flared her biotics, almost crushed the cup in her hands. She didn’t, though. A huntress had better control than that. But all the control in the galaxy couldn’t cast the bitter resentment from her tone. “Alec Ryder brought me here on a lie.”

“He did,” said Lexi. “He conducted an unethical experiment on you without your consent and then lied to you about what your job would be when you arrived in Andromeda. He didn’t consider, much less appreciate, what mattered to you, the _person_ , Cora Harper.”

_Those people had better appreciate you._

They hadn’t.

Janae would be angry if she heard, cheeks flushed, her biotic aura flaring.

Or maybe not. Too much time had passed. Now, Cora would be some dim memory of one fleeting relationship from Matriarch Janae’s long ago maidenhood.

Or she could be dead. Because, as Janae had harshly pointed out, maidens didn’t always live to be matriarchs. Especially not commandos. That the only maiden demographic even less likely to reach the matriarch stage were mercenaries or one of their subsets—pirates.

Mostly because they ran into too many commandos.

Janae hadn’t written. Maybe it had been too hard on her.

Cora couldn’t blame her for it. She just hoped it hadn’t hurt her for too long. Janae deserved love and happiness.

“I wish she hadn’t stopped writing,” Cora said.

“You wish a lot of things,” said Lexi. “But what you don’t say is what you want.”

“I want to be needed.”

Lexi gave her a flat look.

Despite the seriousness, Cora laughed lightly. “That was a cop out, I know.” Then she did her best to relax, but the galley’s chairs weren’t exactly designed for comfort for _any_ species, which was very egalitarian, when she thought about it. “I want Janae to be here. She was family I didn’t realize I had until I was in another galaxy.”

“A rather inconvenient time for a realization,” said Lexi, dry as the Eos desert.

“That’s an understatement,” Cora said, searching for something to give her purpose, just for a while. “I want to do something, though. Something more useful than being a second who can’t fulfill the _role_ of a second. I want to be where I belong. Where I’m needed. The problem is that I don’t know where that is anymore.”

Lexi tilted her head to the side. “Have you ever felt like you belonged anywhere?”

“The Daughters, for a while. Until Nisira sent me to the Initiative. And with Janae, I always felt like I belonged. But that would be hard to replicate here with—” She stopped and thought about it. “I could work on tracking down Janae’s people. The Leusinia. The asari ark wouldn’t be the Daughters or Janae, but it’s a connection to when I felt like I belonged.”

“It sounds like a constructive way for you to grieve.”

Cora hadn’t looked at her reactions to Alec Ryder’s choices from that perspective before. “What am I grieving?”

“The loss of your purpose for being here, for one. You’d believed Alec had helped you find and then had given you a sense of purpose. You came here because of that, but now his choices have left you adrift again.”

“Yeah,” said Cora. “I can see that.” She nodded, more to herself than Lexi, as a plan began to coalesce. “I think I’ll start by asking around. Maybe Kallo’s heard something since he exchanges gossip like it’s currency.”

“An accurate assessment of our pilot,” Lexi said with a smile. “And a good starting place, as well. I’m glad you’ve found it.”

 

* * *

 

“You need to be awake right now,” said a crew member Janae didn’t know. Or didn’t remember. It was hard to tell because she’d just come out of cryo and her mind hadn’t caught up yet.

“I’m _trying_.” She winced at the volume and her not-quite-right vision and rubbed at her eyes. “Sorry, I’m still kind of… whatever I am right now. Sluggish and confused.”

“We all are to one degree or another. But you’re supposed to be escorting the people in our escape pod. Our evac orders have come through.”

“Evac orders?” Her recovery drink didn’t taste quite right and Janae frowned at it. But it could be that her taste buds weren’t entirely awake yet and not the drink’s fault at all and Janae frowned at herself.

She drained the bottle anyway.

“From Sarissa Theris, yes.” The crew member tugged on Janae’s arm. “Come on, I’ll bring you to the armory so you can gear up. Once I’m sure you won’t shoot yourself or someone else in the foot, I’ll give you a sidearm.”

That was fair, in Janae’s estimation. Walking became easier as they went, but that was only _walking_. Goddess knew what would happen if she attempted anything requiring more coordination. “Who are you again?”

“Lieutenant Hydaria. Bridge officer.” Hydaria hustled Janae into an armory and then shoved a bag into Janae’s arms. Oh, it was her personal kit. “There’s your hardsuit and the rest of the gear you brought. Get it on while I check out the weapons and ammunition.”

The question occurred to Janae halfway into pulling on her hardsuit. “Wait, _why_ are we evacuating?”

“I’m told we’ve been under attack for… days? Weeks? And there’s a weird space phenomenon that’s interfering with everything on the ship. Sensors especially. I don’t know. I just woke up this morning. Everything’s a mess.”

After they linked up with the others assigned to their escape pod, they headed straight to it. They encountered two of their mysterious attackers on the way, which Janae flanked and killed without much trouble. They were curious looking beings, like they were covered with bones on the outside. But they didn’t have time to study the aliens. Janae and Hydaria had a responsibility to get the twenty-two civilians safely off their ark.

It hurt, pain twisting through her chest, to watch the Leusinia fade to nothing from the launched escape pod.

Their trajectory eventually sent them to a planet and plunged them headlong into its atmosphere. The escape pod rattled and shuddered around them, the bulkheads glowing from the heat of entry. There were _reasons_ why Janae hadn’t signed with a militia that specialized in high altitude jumps and the current state of the escape pod was one of them. The alarming scent of something burning was another. Goddess.

“I can see our landing site,” said Hydaria. “Looks like it might be near a settlement!”

The landing wasn’t as hard as Janae had feared. However, the outer hull of the pod told the real story, scorched and dinged, a long trench behind it and its nose partially buried in the dry, rocky dirt.

There wasn’t a settlement. It _had_ been one, but the buildings were abandoned. The lake nearby was toxic. The air was breathable and the background radiation at acceptable levels, but the fauna was overly aggressive and they couldn’t get readings on comms for an Initiative settlement or outpost or even a team. There’d been a flyby—or so they thought—a couple hours ago, but they hadn’t seen anything since, nor had the pilot given any indication that they’d noticed Janae’s group.

“What do you think we should do?” Hydaria asked after they’d dealt with the latest round of giant acid-spitting insects.

Janae wrinkled her nose at the bug remains and then at the brown lake and the acrid haze above it. Then she considered the cluster of prefabs, their designs familiar to everyone in the Initiative. “Hack into one of the buildings, set a perimeter, and activate a secure distress signal. We have supplies enough on the pod to last for a couple weeks. If we don’t get anyone on comms, we’ll reevaluate in two days.”

Hydaria sighed. “Welcome to Andromeda, I suppose.”

“Welcome to Andromeda.” Janae checked an outside pocket of her suit for the tiny shampoo bottle, reassuring herself that it was there.

Then, for the first time, she wondered if Cora had made it to Andromeda at all.

 

* * *

 

“It’s an Initiative signal, I’m sure of it,” said Kallo. “But it’s encrypted with a non-Initiative protocol.”

“The transmission is using an encryption code employed by the Asari Republics Navy,” said SAM.

“Do you have the key?” asked Cora, barely keeping both the disbelief and hope from showing. They’d found a footprint. Maybe a partial one, but it was more than they had before. “If you don’t, I do.”

“I do have it, Lieutenant Harper. One moment.”

As SAM worked, everyone on the Tempest’s bridge—Kallo, Cora, Ryder, Suvi, and Vetra—looked out the forward viewport at Eos below. From where Cora stood, she couldn’t really see the location of the signal just outside Resilience, but she tried anyway. She couldn’t ignore the thrill of hope that surged from her chest. Maybe they’d found their first clue on the whereabouts of the asari ark.

“It is an automated distress signal from an escape pod assigned to Ark Leusinia,” said SAM.

Ryder grinned at Cora. “Wanna go see? Kallo can fly us down.”

“He doesn’t fly us down and I might consider a high altitude jump,” said Cora.

“Okay, the mere idea of a jump like that scares the pants off me, so I vote we have Kallo set us down nearby.”

Cora started for the airlock. “Let’s get prepped.”

Kallo deftly landed Tempest twenty meters from the abandoned settlement. As soon as Cora, Ryder, and Vetra trotted down the lowered loading ramp, they easily spotted the escape pod and the furrow it had plowed when it landed.

They inspected the outside of the pod, Ryder with her scanner, Vetra and Cora relying on visuals. Cora ran a finger along the scorched hull, her glove picking up the soot left from atmospheric entry. The angle of descent must have been off because the visible damage looked to have pushed the limits of the pod’s structural integrity.

SAM opened the pod’s sealed hatch and they conducted an inspection the interior. There were signs of use, like the wrapper of a nutrition bar, a datapad under one of the jump seats, and the distress signal Cora deactivated.

“I wonder where they went,” Ryder said as she scanned the pod again. “There aren’t any footprints.”

Cora studied their surroundings. “If they had even one commando with them, she would’ve covered their trail. I’d recommend searching Resilience first.”

“If you wanted to find extra supplies, that’s where I’d look,” said Vetra.

Ryder nodded. “All right. Let’s try there.”

The walk to the outpost site was surprisingly lacking in swarming spitbugs, which was a nice change.

“So,” Ryder said from beside her, SAM-enhanced scanner still active, “do you think the low spitbug population is from them being killed or chased off by the asari from the pod or because they’ve, um—” Her face took on a green hue and she gulped. “You know what? Nevermind.”

“Let’s go with option number one,” said Cora.

When they got to the outpost, the prefabs showed no signs of forced entry after their cursory inspection, but if any techs or commandos had been in the escape pod, they would have left no trace after hacking their way in. Which was good if they needed to hide, but not so great when their rescuers couldn’t locate them.

“We’ll have to conduct a building to building search,” Ryder said after their second full circle. “Where do you think we should start?”

Cora pointed to the central building, which was situated between the water towers. “There. Defendable and it has easy access to water and the main comm tower.”

“Okay, you take point since—”

A flash of movement from an opening door cut Ryder off. Cora activated her biotic field, ready to deal with any threat from spitbugs to scavengers to kett.

Two blue figures dashed out, faces obscured by the Eos sun glinting off the windows. Cora squinted—asari, definitely. One wore the duty fatigues of a member of the Leusinia’s crew, while the other wore the Initiative armor type issued only to commandos. Cora didn’t recognize the first person, but she did the second, however improbable it should’ve been.

No, impossible.

Impossible because the last time she’d seen her, she’d been nothing but a blue speck left behind in the Milky Way.

“Janae?” The wind caught the name and carried it away. Cora repeated it, loud enough to carry over the wind.

“Who?” asked Vetra.

Cora took a step forward. It had to be her. It had to be. Then Cora stopped questioning and ran, startling the two asari.

Then one of them shouted, “Cora!” and sprinted towards her.

They met in the middle, arms pulling each other close before fingers framed faces and lips met. Long and slow, savoring the moment as if either of them might wake up and find it achingly over. Then foreheads pressed together and they breathed in the presence of the other. Cora wasn’t sure how long they stood there, at peace, biotic fields resonating around them.

Then it was disrupted. “While I love reunions,” said one of other asari who’d exited the prefab behind Janae, “and I really do, I’ve had enough of these bugs. So, if you could get on with it, it would be appreciated.”

“I thought I’d never see you again,” said Cora, eyes opening to see Janae still there.

Janae pulled away slightly, brows drawn together as she asked with whispered dread, “Is that what you wanted? To never see me again?”

“No! Janae, I’ve wanted to see you again every day since the last, but you hadn’t…” Cora leaned away to get a better look at her face. “Why did you follow me?”

Janae grinned, all the worry gone in an instant, and then retrieved a small object from her pocket and placed it in Cora’s hand. “You forgot this.”

Cora stared at it, a tiny bottle of her favorite shampoo, and then burst into laughter. Then Janae kissed her again through her own giggles, the enthusiasm carried within a welcome home no matter what galaxy surrounded them.


End file.
